Brit Morin founded Brit, a
domestic lifestyle brand for the technology
age.Brit

Brit Morin, a former Googler who is reinventing herself as the
Martha Stewart of tech, has raised a $6.3 million Series A round
of financing from Index Ventures, Lerer Ventures, Cowboy
Ventures, Marissa Mayer, Aileen Lee and Oak Investment Partners.

Tina Sharkey and Oak Investment Partners' Fred Harman are joining
the board of directors, which is a huge win for Morin since
Harman coached the likes of Arianna Huffington and Bleacher
Report to exits worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Harman usually cuts larger checks though. His firm likes to own
20-30% of each company it invests in; it put $25 million into The
Huffington Post and led Bleacher Report's $20 million round of
financing. We asked Harman why he made an exception for Morin's
Brit + Co and invested in an
earlier round.

Harman says he liked Morin's background and the opportunity to
merge content with commerce.

"At an entrepreneur level I found [Morin] to be an incredibly
compelling person to back," Harman says. "She had a unique blend
of passion for the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) category that goes way
back in her life. Blended with her Google experience and tech
savvy in the Valley, and I thought that's a really interesting
combination as an entrepreneur. She seemed to have a knack for
being a media personality."

Creating a brand around yourself like Morin is doing comes with
its own set of challenges, Harman admits. But one person he
already backed, Arianna Huffington, pulled it off, and Harman
promptly introduced Morin to her. "[A personal brand] can
be a tremendous opportunity if you can get it right," Harman
says.

Morin has already started incorporating e-commerce into her
business model. She's been selling monthly DIY kits of crafts, as
well as finished products of the things she teaches people to
make.

"It's getting increasingly challenging to build a pure
ad-supported business model in the publishing world," Harman
says. "In the media category, we're looking at diversity in
business models. Some audiences are more receptive to commerce
opportunities than others. In the news or politics media space,
it's difficult to blend e-commerce into the model. But as we
looked at the audience Brit is aggregating, it's people consuming
content with the mindset of being creative and making something.
That [mentality] needs some commerce activities to be fulfilled."

While Morin seemed to raise her Series A effortlessly, not all
founders are as fortunate. It has become difficult for startups
to raise multiple millions, a result of last year's frothy
investment environment. Morin says she took meetings on both
coasts as well as in LA. But she and Harman agree: if your
startup has the right metrics and business strategy, you can get
financed.